Competitive research is a crucial component of a strong marketing strategy. After all, if you don’t know who your competitors are and what marketing tactics they use, you will find it difficult to differentiate yourself and your products. However, real competition may be beyond your expectations, so you may need to dig deeper by conducting a thorough competitor analysis. While some competitors are direct and easy to spot, others may take more time to uncover. Below we’ll look at different strategies to identify your competitors so that you can learn how to run more efficient campaigns and maximise your sales. As a result, these tips can help you reveal hidden competitors, that you may not have considered previously.
Perform Market Research
It’s important to determine your place in the market and understand current trends, if you want to build your competitive advantage. You can identify your competitors with the help of Hello Pareto, who can help you take a closer look at your rivals, their products, and marketing efforts. You’ll be able to perform strategic market research, research competitors, and track their activity across the web. Tracking competitors is a great way to stay up to date with fresh data, related to hiring activity, customer reviews, and monthly headcount. This will help you improve your own strategy and even prepare for their next move.
Monitor Social Media Platforms
Social media has a powerful effect on the buying decisions of today’s customers. As a result, social media platforms and community forums are some of the best places to obtain the latest data on your competitors. Be sure to research the most popular social media platforms among your audience and use keywords from your keyword research. This will make it easier to find out what your customers’ buying options are. Find out more about the brands they talk about and consider whether you provide the same or similar value with your content.
Conduct Keyword Research
Conducting comprehensive SEO research and utilising effective SEO tools can help you find out who is competing with your content on search engines. It’s likely that many of your customers are looking for products and solutions by typing keywords into search engines. This means that you’re not only in competition with your direct competitors, but also with every other website competing for the same keywords as you. For example, you may encounter different individuals, blogs, businesses, publications, or organisations. You will want to take a closer look at how these companies deliver their content to better understand their marketing strategy.
Take A Look At Paid Data
In addition to analysing organic ratings, it’s also crucial to look at what ads appear at the top of the page. These are paid results, which indicate a business is bidding and paying for those keywords. It’s important to take note of these companies, as any business willing to pay for visibility is definitely a competitor. Therefore, you should look at the content they have created, as well as the keywords that they’re not only targeting for but paying for. The more data you acquire, the better you can optimise your own SEO strategy.
Check Links And Mentions
Another effective way to identify competitors is to follow links and mentions. For example, you can look at review sites or affiliate-focused blogs to see which brands are making it into valuable online conversations. It may be even better if you can find authoritative sites with publications with a large following that provide different links and mentions in their articles. This will help you discover well-known competitors, as well as unique and up-and-coming ones. Once you identify these sites, check out their websites and perform keyword analysis. Also, consider how their content catered to the audience in a way that made it link-worthy.
Ask Your Customers
Your customers can help you learn more about your competitors, as they have likely sifted through many of them before finding your products. As a result, there are many ways you can solicit customer feedback, whether that’s online or in-person. This may involve asking your customers on social media which brands they consider when they want to buy a product like yours. Alternatively, you may strike a conversation at checkout or send an email survey after every sale. Once you find the best approach, remember to often check feedback for trends.
Identify Replacement Competitors
Replacement competitors offer alternatives to the products or services you provide. This means that you both seek to solve the same problems, but the means are different. If there is more than one way to solve the same pain point, these competitors can be dangerous. In addition, they can be challenging to identify, as you can’t always be aware of customers’ minds and the choices that led them to you. To gain a better understanding of your replacement competitors, you may consider interviewing customers or stakeholders or monitoring new entrants into the industry.